ADVENT II: THE BIRTH OF PEACE
(12/06/09)
Scripture Lessons:Isaiah 9:6-7; 11:6-9
Galatians 5:22
John 14:25-27
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)
Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent is a time to prepare for both the celebration and the experience of Christmas. With the help of our Advent worship, we hope to not only celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call Lord, but to experience the birth of the eternal Christ in our lives. If we actually give birth to Christ in our heart, in what the 12th century German mystic Angelus Silesius called “the womb of the eternal,” we will serve as a vessel within which the eternal Christ can become incarnate in our world of space and time, just as Mary did for her world so long ago.
In this Advent season, as we try to rediscover Mary as a biblical figure and discover her as a spiritual presence within us, we open ourselves to the birth of the Christ and also to what the apostle Paul called the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
These gifts, feelings, or states of mind are qualities of God that enter the world of space and time as they are experienced and as they find expression in human beings. If we experience these gifts, if we give birth to them or incarnate them in our own lives, they will not only transform us, they will help to transform our little corner of the world.
In 1868, the Episcopal clergyman Phillips Brooks wrote the words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” The words of this hymn call us to be like Mary, to give birth to the Christ child and to experience the fruit of the Spirit in our hearts and in our lives.
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth;
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.
How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him, still
The dear Christ enters in.
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.
The first and second verses of this hymn bring us back to the actual town of Bethlehem and Mary the mother of Jesus. The third and fourth verses transcend this historical dimension as they shift the focus to us.
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
This verse tells us we, like Mary, can receive the blessings of God, the fruit of the Spirit.
Where meek souls will receive Him, still
The dear Christ enters in.
This verse tells us that the eternal Christ can enter into us, be born in us if we can become like Mary, a “meek soul,” opening ourselves to the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The final verse is a prayer. In this prayer we ask the holy Child of Bethlehem to descend on us, to enter into us, to be born in us, to abide with us, to become our Lord.
In 1535 the Protestant reformer Martin Luther wrote the words to a Christmas hymn entitled, “Ah, Dearest Jesus, Holy Child.” This hymn, which we will sing as our communion hymn this morning, is an eloquent articulation of the point I am trying to make. In the hymn, Martin Luther prays:
Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
Martin Luther calls us to make a bed, a quiet chamber for Jesus within our heart.
This hymn and our focus on Mary this Advent season remind me of an aria from Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.” This particular solo, a bass aria near the end, always brings me to tears. The German text reads:
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein.
Ich will Jesum selbst begraben.
The English translation that appears in the libretto is,
Make thee clean, my heart, from sin.
Unto Jesus give thou welcome.
I am far from fluent in German, but I believe that the passage is more powerful if translated literally. The first line is a prayer asking God to make our heart pure: “Mache dich, mein Herze, rein.” Why do we need to make our heart pure? We need to make our heart pure because we are preparing our heart for something special.
The next verse, “Ich will Jesum selbst begraben,” literally means “I will bury Jesus within myself.” “Begraben” doesn’t mean to welcome; it means to bury or inter. In other words, we ask God to help us make our heart pure enough to be the tomb within which our crucified Lord is laid to rest. If our heart becomes his tomb, then we will become the container for his resurrection.
Our desire to have our heart become the tomb within which our Lord is laid to rest is the same as our desire to have our heart become the womb within which the Christ is born. From the cradle to the grave, from the womb to the tomb -- the mystical message of the Gospel is that Christ was not only born to Mary in the form of Jesus, Christ can also be born within us. If we can become like Mary, humble and open to God, the Holy Spirit will enter our heart and impregnate us with the spirit of the living Christ. When this happens we will receive what Paul called the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. After we receive it we can actualize it, give birth to it, live it in our lives.
This Advent season we are attempting to rediscover the historical Mary and discover the Mary who dwells within us, who is a part of us. The Jesuit spiritual director Anthony de Mello has noted that the mystics throughout the ages have had a special devotion to Mary. If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, I wonder why.
The answer does not seem to lie in Mary’s role as recorded in the Bible. With regard to the historical Mary, we noted last week that the apostle Paul makes little mention of her. Mark, the author of the first gospel to be written, pays no attention to the matter of Jesus’ birth. It is only in the gospels of Matthew and Luke that the attention shifts to the event of Jesus’ birth and Mary’s role in the incarnation. Even the book of Acts, which was written by Luke, contains only two references to Mary.
Even though the Bible doesn’t treat Mary as a significant figure, the church has done so since the early centuries. We believe that Mary was the vessel through which the eternal God, who is beyond the realm of space and time, became incarnate, entered into our world of space and time in human form. Mary provided a space for God to give birth, just as the humble stable, depicted on the painting of the nativity on the wall to your right, provided a place where this could take place.
When we, like Mary, give birth to the Christ, we incarnate the gifts of the Spirit. The first Sunday of Advent we lit the candle of hope, one of the gifts of the Spirit. We reminded ourselves of the importance of hope. We noted that hope is more than wishing; it is a transcendent vision given to us by God, making us aware of God’s will for us and for the world. Our world desperately needs this gift, the blessing of hope.
This morning we lit the candle of peace. Peace is built upon hope, the vision of God’s will for us and for the world. In these dark days, we need to experience peace in ourselves, in our families, in our nation, and in the world.
The word for peace in both the Old and the New Testaments is the Hebrew word “shalom,” which means wholeness or wellbeing. Shalom is used to express a wish or a hope as well as to describe a state of being. It can be used as a greeting or a farewell.
The word “peace” is commonly used in the Old Testament to indicate material wellbeing, prosperity, and safety from enemies. This association between peace and material prosperity is not stressed in the New Testament. In the New Testament, shalom is used as a spiritual blessing and often appears in association with righteousness. Luke, in Acts 10:36, tells us that the gospel is a gospel of peace.
In the New Testament, the notion of individual spiritual peace or peace of mind appears in several passages. Paul tells us that the peace of God (Phil. 4:7) or the peace of Christ (Col. 3:5) can rule our hearts. In Romans 8:6 he tells us that a mind set on the Spirit is filled with life and peace. If this is true, then if our lives are not filled with life and peace, perhaps it is because our minds are not sufficiently set on the Spirit.
The second reading from Isaiah gives us a clue as to how we might experience or create the peace that passes all understanding. This peace is not forged from an absence of strife. It is not synonymous with the absence of conflict. It is also not built around financial security or material prosperity.
Jesus lived in peace, peace as a state of mind or being. His peace was certainly not built around financial security, material prosperity or an absence of conflict. The peace that Jesus experienced and incarnated, because it came from his grounding in God, gave him a place to stand as he faced the storms of life. It is this peace that can be incarnated in us this Christmas if we, like Mary, can become the womb of Christ.
Isaiah suggests that we cannot establish a just and lasting peace by eliminating differences. Peace must exist in the midst of conflict. We cannot create peace by eliminating the wolf, which the lamb would be tempted to do. The wolf and the lamb must live together. Peace is not built around homogeneity but around the reconciliation of opposites in the service of a higher vision. Peace on earth, which seems to elude us, must be grounded in a vision of diversity, of different voices singing together in harmony rather than a single voice, no matter how beautiful that voice might be.
This is the peace that I hope we can find during this Advent season. This is the peace that we need to incarnate within our world, within our nation, and within our families. It has to begin with us. Like Mary, we need to provide a place for hope and peace to be born. We need to be the stable, the manger -- a container for the Holy Spirit to enter and bestow on us the true gifts of Christmas.
Let us, like Mary, open our heart to God in this Advent season. As we gather around the table with our Lord in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, let us open our heart to God to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. If our heart becomes what Angelus Silesius called “the womb of the Eternal,” we might give birth to the hope and peace that we need to carry us as individuals and as a nation through dark and difficult times.
When we do this, our Lord is born and continually reborn in us.
A communion meditation shared by the Reverend Paul D. Sanderson
The First Community Church of Southborough
December 6, 2009
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